His Family

by Ernest Poole

  “It’s so silly!” she muttered unsteadily. “Just my condition, I suppose. I feel as though I had done with school for the remainder of my days!… Better leave me now, dearie,” she added. “I’m not very proud of myself to-night—but I’ll be all right in the morning.”

  The next day she was herself again, and went quietly on with her preparations for the coming of her child. But still the ceaseless interests of those hordes of other children followed her into the house. Not only her successor but principals and teachers came for counsel or assistance. And later, when reluctantly she refused to see such visitors, still the telephone kept ringing and letters poured in by every mail. For in her larger family there were weddings, births and deaths, and the endless savage struggle for life; and there were many climaxes of dreams and aspirations, of loves and bitter jealousies. And out of all this straining and this fever of humanity, came messages to Deborah: last appeals for aid and advice, and gifts for the child who was to be born; tiny garments quaintly made by women and girls from Italy, from Russia and from Poland; baby blankets, wraps and toys and curious charms and amulets. There were so many of these gifts.

  “There’s enough for forty babies,” Deborah told her father. “What on earth am I to do, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings? And isn’t it rather awful, the way these inequalities will crop up in spite of you? I know of eight tenement babies born down there in this one week. How much fuss and feathers is made over them, and their coming into the world, poor mites?” Roger smiled at his daughter.

  “You remind me of Jekyll and Hyde,” he said.

  “Father! What a horrible thought! What have Jekyll and Hyde to do with me?”

  “Nothing, my dear,” he answered. “Only it’s queer and a little uncanny, something I’ve never seen before, this double mother life of yours.”

  * * * * *

  It was only a few days later when coming home one evening he found that Deborah’s doctor had put her to bed and installed a nurse. There followed a week of keen suspense when Roger stayed home from the office. She liked to have him with her, and sitting at her bedside he saw how changed his daughter was, how far in these few hours she had drawn into herself. He had suspected for some time that all was not well with Deborah, and Allan confirmed his suspicions. There was to be grave danger both for the mother and the child. It would come out all right, of course, he strove to reassure himself. Nothing else could happen now, with her life so splendidly settled at last. That Fate could be so pitiless—no, it was unthinkable!

  “This is what comes of your modern woman!” Roger exclaimed to Allan one night. “This is the price she’s paying for those nerve-racking years of work!”

  The crisis came toward the end of the week. And while for one entire night and through the day that followed and far into the next night the doctors and nurses fought for life in the room upstairs, Roger waited, left to himself, sitting in his study or restlessly moving through the house. And still that thought was with him—the price! It was kept in his mind by the anxious demands which her big family made for news. The telephone kept ringing. Women in motors from uptown and humbler visitors young and old kept coming to make inquiries. More gifts were brought and flowers. And Roger saw these people, and as he answered their questions he fairly scowled in their faces—unconsciously, for his mind was not clear. Reporters came. Barely an hour passed without bringing a man or a woman from some one of the papers. He gave them only brief replies. Why couldn’t they leave his house alone? He saw her name in headlines: “Deborah Gale at Point of Death.” And he turned angrily away. Vividly, on the second night, there came to him a picture of Deborah’s birth so long ago in this same house. How safe it had been, how different, how secluded and shut in. No world had clamored then for news. And so vivid did this picture grow, that when at last there came to his ears the shrill clear cry of a new life, it was some time before he could be sure whether this were not still his dream of that other night so long ago.

  But now a nurse had led him upstairs, and he stood by a cradle looking down at a small wrinkled face almost wholly concealed by a soft woolly blanket. And presently Allan behind him said,

  “It’s a boy, and he’s to be named after you.” Roger looked up.

  “How’s the mother?” he asked.

  “Almost out of danger,” was the reply. Then Roger glanced at Allan’s face and saw how drawn and gray it was. He drew a long breath and turned back to the child. Allan had gone and so had the nurse, and he was alone by the cradle. Relief and peace and happiness stole into his spirit. He felt the deep remoteness of this strange new little creature from all the clamoring world without—which he himself was soon to leave. The thought grew clearer, clearer, as with a curious steady smile Roger stood there looking down.

  “Well, little brother, you’re here, thank God. And nobody knows how close we’ll be—for a little while,” he thought. “For we’re almost out of the world, you and I.”

  * * * * *

  Days passed, Deborah’s strength increased, and soon they let Roger come into the room. She, too, was remote from the world for a time. That great family outside was anxious no longer, it left her alone. But soon it would demand her. Never again, he told himself, would she be so close, so intimate, as here in her bed with this child of hers to whom she had given her father’s name. “These hours are my real good-byes.”

  Two long quiet weeks of this happiness, and then in a twinkling it was gone. The child fell sick, within a few hours its small existence hung by a thread—and to Roger’s startled eyes a new Deborah was revealed! Tense and silent on her bed, her sensitive lips compressed with pain, her birthmark showing a jagged line of fiery red upon her brow as her ears kept straining to catch every sound from the nursery adjoining, through hours of stern anguish she became the kind of mother that she had once so dreaded—shutting out everything else in the world: people, schools, all other children, rich or poor, well, sick or dying! Here was the crisis of Deborah’s life!

  One night as she lay listening, with her hand gripping Roger’s tight, frowning abruptly she said to him, in a harsh, unnatural voice:

  “They don’t care any longer, none of them care! _I’m_ safe and they’ve stopped worrying, for they know they’ll soon have me back at work! The work,” she added fiercely, “that made my body what it is, not fit to bear a baby!” She threw a quick and tortured look toward the door of the other room. “My work for those others, all those years, will be to blame if this one dies! And if it doesn’t live I’m through! I won’t go on! I couldn’t! I’d be too bitter after this—toward all of them—those children!”

  These last two words were whispers so bitter they made Roger cold.

  “But this child is going to live,” he responded hoarsely. Its mother stared up with a quivering frown. The next moment her limbs contracted as from an electric shock. There had come a faint wail from the other room.

  And this went on for three days and nights. Again Roger lived as in a dream. He saw haggard faces from time to time of doctors, nurses, servants. He saw Allan now and then, his tall ungainly figure stooped, his features gaunt, his strong wide jaw set like a vise, but his eyes kind and steady still, his low voice reassuring. And Roger noticed John at times hobbling quickly down a hall and stopping on his crutches before a closed door, listening. Then these figures would recede, and it was as though he were alone in the dark.

  At last the nightmare ended. One afternoon as he sat in his study, Allan came in slowly and dropped exhausted into a chair. He turned to Roger with a smile.

  “Safe now, I think,” he said quietly.

  Roger went to Deborah and found her asleep, her face at peace. He went to his room and fell himself into a long dreamless slumber.

  In the days which followed, again he sat at her bedside and together they watched the child in her arms. So feeble still the small creature appeared that they both spoke in whispers. But as little by little its strength returned, Deborah too became herself. And though still jealous
ly watchful of its every movement, she had time for other thinking. She had talks with her husband, not only about their baby but about his work and hers. Slowly her old interest in all they had had in common returned, and to the messages from outside she gave again a kindlier ear.

  “Allan tells me,” she said one day, when she was alone with her father, “that I can have no more children. And I’m glad of that. But at least I have one,” she added, “and he has already made me feel like a different woman than before. I feel sometimes as though I’d come a million miles along in life. And yet again it feels so close, all that I left back there in school. Because I’m so much closer now—to every mother and every child. At last I’m one of the family.”

  CHAPTER XLII

  Of that greater family, one member had been in the house all through the month which had just gone by. But he had been so quiet, so carefully unobtrusive, that he had been scarcely noticed. Very early each morning, day after day, John had gone outside for his breakfast and thence to the office where he himself had handled the business as well as he could, only coming to Roger at night now and then with some matter he could not settle alone, but always stoutly declaring that he needed no other assistance.

  “Don’t come, Mr. Gale,” he had urged. “You look worn out. You’ll be sick yourself if you ain’t careful. And anyhow, if you hang around you’ll be here whenever she wants you.”

  Early in Deborah’s illness, John had offered to give up his room for the use of one of the nurses.

  “That’s mighty thoughtful of you, Johnny,” Allan had responded. “But we’ve got plenty of room as it is. Just you stick around. We want you here.”

  “All right, Doc. If there’s any little thing, you know—answering the ‘phone at night or anything else that I can do—”

  “Thank you, so; I’ll let you know. But in the meantime go to bed.”

  From that day on, John had taken not only his breakfast but his supper, too, outside, and no one had noticed his absence. Coming in late, he had hobbled silently up to his room, stopping to listen at Deborah’s door. He had kept so completely out of the way, it was not till the baby was three weeks old, and past its second crisis, that Deborah thought to ask for John. When he came to her bed, she smiled up at him with the baby in her arms.

  “I thought we’d see him together,” she said. John stood on his crutches staring down. And as Deborah watched him, all at once her look grew intent. “Johnny,” she said softly, “go over there, will you, and turn up the light, so we can see him better.”

  And when this was done, though she still talked smilingly of the child, again and again she glanced up at John’s face, at the strange self-absorbed expression, stern and sad and wistful, there. When he had gone the tears came in her eyes. And Deborah sent for her husband.

  * * * * *

  The next day, at the office, John came into Roger’s room. Roger had been at work several days and they had already cleared up their affairs.

  “Here’s something,” said John gruffly, “that I wish you’d put away somewhere.”

  And he handed to his partner a small blue leather album, filled with the newspaper clippings dealing with Deborah’s illness. On the front page was one with her picture and a long record of her service to the children of New York.

  “She wouldn’t want to see it now,” John continued awkwardly. “But I thought maybe later on the boy would like to have it. What do you think?” he inquired. Roger gave him a kindly glance.

  “I think he will. It’s a fine thing to keep.” And he handed it back. “But I guess you’d better put it away, and give it to her later yourself.”

  John shifted his weight on his crutches, so quickly that Roger looked up in alarm:

  “Look here! You’re not well!” He saw now that the face of the cripple was white and the sweat was glistening on his brow. John gave a harsh little nervous laugh.

  “Oh, it’s nothing much, partner,” he replied. “That’s another thing I wanted to tell you. I’ve had some queer pains lately—new ones!” He caught his breath.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, you young fool?”

  “You had your own troubles, didn’t you?” John spoke with difficulty. “But I’ll be all right, I guess! All I need is a few days off!”

  Roger had pressed a button, and his stenographer came in.

  “Call a taxi,” he said sharply. “And, John, you go right over there and lie down. I’m going to take you home at once!”

  “I’ve got a better scheme,” said John, setting his determined jaws. The sweat was pouring down his cheeks. “It may be a week—but there’s just a chance it—may be a little worse than that! So I’ve got a room in a hospital! See? Be better all round!” He swayed forward.

  “Johnny!” Roger caught him just in time, and the boy lay senseless in his arms.

  * * * * *

  At home, a few hours later, Allan came with another physician down from John’s small bedroom. He saw his colleague to the door and then came in to Roger.

  “I’m afraid Johnny has come to the end.”

  For a moment Roger stared at him.

  “Has, eh,” he answered huskily. “You’re absolutely sure he has? There’s nothing—nothing on earth we can do?”

  “Nothing more than we’re doing now.”

  “He has fooled you fellows before, you know—”

  “Not this time.”

  “How long will it be?”

  “Days or hours—I don’t know.”

  “He mustn’t suffer!”

  “I’ll see to that.” Roger rose and walked the floor.

  “It was the last month did it, of course—”

  “Yes—”

  “I blame myself for that.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Allan gently. “You’ve done a good deal for Johnny Geer.”

  “He has done a good deal for this family! Can Deborah see him?”

  “I wish she could.”

  “Better stretch a point for her, hadn’t you? She’s been a kind of a mother to John.”

  “I know. But she can’t leave her bed.”

  “Then you won’t tell her?”

  “I think she knows. She talked to me about him last night.”

  “That’s it, a mother!” Roger cried. “She was watching! We were blind!” He came back to his chair and dropped into it.

  “Does John know this himself?” he asked.

  “He suspects it, I think,” said Allan.

  “Then go and tell him, will you, that he’s going to get well. And after you’ve done it I’ll see him myself. I’ve got something in mind I want to think out.”

  After Allan had left the room, Roger sat thinking about John. He thought of John’s birth and his drunken mother, the accident and his struggle for life, through babyhood and childhood, through ignorance and filth and pain, through din and clamor and hunger, fear; of the long fierce fight which John had made not to be “put away” in some big institution, of his battle to keep up his head, to be somebody, make a career for himself. He thought of John’s becoming one of Deborah’s big family, only one of thousands, but it seemed now to Roger that John had stood out from them all, as the figure best embodying that great fierce hunger for a full life, and as the link connecting, the one who slowly year by year had emerged from her greater family and come into her small one. And last of all he thought of John as his own companion, his only one, in the immense adventure on which he was so soon to embark.

  A few moments later he stood by John’s bed.

  “Pretty hard, Johnny?” he gently asked.

  “Oh, not so bad as it might be, I guess—”

  “You’ll soon feel better, they tell me, boy.” John shut his eyes.

  “Yes,” he muttered.

  “Can you stand my talking, just a minute?”

  “Sure I can,” John whispered. “I’m not suffering any now. He’s given me something to put me to sleep. What is it you want to talk about? Business?”

  “Not exactly,
partner. It’s about the family. You’ve got so you’re almost one of us. I guess you know us pretty well.”

  “I guess I do. It’s meant a lot to me, Mr. Gale—”

  “But I’ll tell you what you don’t know, John,” Roger went on slowly. “I had a son in the family once, and he died when he was three months old. That was a long time ago—and I never had another, you see—to take his place—till you came along.” There fell a breathless silence. “And I’ve been thinking lately,” Roger added steadily. “I haven’t long to live, you know. And I’ve been wondering whether—you’d like to come into the family—take my name. Do you understand?”

  John said nothing. His eyes were still closed. But presently, groping over the bed, he found Roger’s hand and clutched it tight. After this, from time to time his throat contracted sharply. Tears welled from under his eyelids. Then gradually, as the merciful drug which Allan had given did its work, his clutch relaxed and he began breathing deep and hard. But still for some time longer Roger sat quietly by his side.

  The next night he was there again. Death had come to the huddled form on the bed, but there had been no relaxing. With the head thrown rigidly far back and all the features tense and hard, it was a fighting figure still, a figure of stern protest against the world’s injustice. But Roger was not thinking of this, but of the discovery he had made, that in their talk of the night before John had understood him—completely. For upon a piece of paper which Allan had given the lad that day, these words had been painfully inscribed: